Lanespotter app
 

just heard this story on NPR's Science Friday show

Like Waze For Bikes, This App Crowd-Sources Info To Help Cyclists Safely Navigate Their Cities | 90.5 WESA

LaneSpotter has three main functions. The bike map shows cyclists where they can find bike lanes or trails in their area. The safety map lets users create and view ratings for any road, ranging from "very safe" to "avoid." The alerts map lets users flag problems like road closures or heavy traffic in real-time, similar to the Waze navigation app for drivers.

https://beta.lanespotter.bike/?map=alert

Neat.

It needs a big user base to work properly though. As in multiple riders on a specific street averaging opinions.

Otherwise you'll get that 1 guy who rides his fixie on the interstate because 'no f's are given' who marks all the highways as 'super safe to ride'. I wonder if it qualifies the accuracy by showing the number of reviews of a road. Sort of like how a 5 star review on Amazon is meaningless if there is only 1 review, but an average star rating is reliable with 6000 reviews.

I use and create using google maps bike lanes. Changes have to be verified to get posted, but there is lots of good stuff around here (Detroit).

When I heard the report I was mostly meh about it. Something that does it automatically like Strava's heat maps would be better...not that I'm a Strava user.

Having ridden a few Interstates, they really are pretty safe to ride. You are riding on an 11 foot shoulder which is a lot wider than most other roads. They are noisy and I probably wouldn't attempt to ride one in a city but I don't consider them "dangerous" as a rule. Here in Colorado, if you ride from Colorado Springs south to the New Mexico border, you have to ride on I-25 a significant amount of the time because there isn't an alternative.

I had to ride along I-5 once when Pendleton was closed to cyclists (ironically because they were having a ceremony to honor a wounded vet who rode a handcycle across the country). It was terrible. At best, the shoulder is wide enough, but it's full of debris, at one point there was a broken-down car pulled over right up to a guard rail so we were forced to go around on the traffic side, and then we had to ride into and through a rest stop because we couldn't chance trying to cross the entrance ramp.

Went thru the map and noticed in Texas there isn't much. Checked Fort Worth area nothing near me. Check the map on those webpage. Unfortunately the reviews are very low as you have to log in with Facebook. Don't do Facebook so I'm out.